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Lilo & Stitch

I have just taken time out in between briefs to watch Lilo & Stitch whilst feeding the boy his tea. I confess that I had one eye on the tv and one on the tuna sandwiches that were being liberally smeared all over the high chair and his face, and that were threatening to come in my direction, so I may have missed some of the detail. But it still made me cry - just a little bit. But then I am a sap.

Lilo is a Hawaiin orphan being raised by a struggling older sister. She is bullied at school and displaying alarming behavioural problems including violence against her contemporaries. She is odd and sad (she explains to the other girls at school that her home made green doll's head is oversized because it is full of insects - she is shunned). She is at risk of removal by the oddest ex-CIA social worker / man in black I have ever seen and apparently the sisters are left to fend for themselves with no help or support at all. And then they adopt an odd looking 'dog' Stitch, in fact an alien experiment programmed to exhibit destructive tendencies but who longs for a family to belong to. I don't really understand how the squalid living environment, near death through negligence and demonstrably poor behaviour management techniques are miraculously overcome by the simple concept of 'family' (the Hawaiin word is 'Ohana' meaning family, and the concept that nobody gets left behind) nor how the house that was blown up by aliens is rebuilt in a mere blink of an eye (although I think that may have been down to some kind of alien wizardry). But somehow it turns out ok and the family lives happily ever after with Lilo and Stitch, big sis and random male friend who is good at surfing who appears towards the end I think just to make it more of a conventional sort of unit. But it was a touching movie with a refreshing glimpse of the sadness and oddness of children who live with fractured families and loss. But at the end of the day although Lilo is a wierd kid, she is still a cartoon and as cute as a button. Not all survivors of difficult home scenarios are quite so appealing. And sometimes someone is left behind.